[Elecraft] Regarding Heathkit

[Wayne Burdick]

I grew up with Heathkit and built or repaired many of their products.  
I learned a lot from them. (I would soon try my own hand at kit  
design. Alas, the high price of 1970s-era TTL ICs doomed my digital  
tach project.)

There was a Heathkit retail outlet at Grossmont Center, two miles from  
my house in La Mesa. My high school friends and I would drop by  
occasionally to drool over the all-Heath ham station on display. The  
store's carefully dimmed ambient lighting enhanced the aristocratic  
glow of the meter lamps, while the triband yagi on the roof never  
failed to pull in strong DX stations on 15 meters. But in those days,  
funded as we were by paper routes and push mowers, the dream seemed  
far out of reach.

The sales counter, pristine and intimidatingly high, was staffed by a  
clean-cut middle-aged man with a touch of gray at the sideburns. You  
know the stereotype: pipe in one hand, soldering iron in the other, as  
if he'd stepped right out of Heath's catalog. He politely denied my  
credit application.

Wistful memories notwithstanding, the impending resurrection of  
Heath's kit line reminds me of the story about a woolly mammoth that  
drowned in icy waters some 10,000 years ago. Scientists found the  
beast nearly intact, suspended in a block of ice somewhere in northern  
Canada. Given the capricious nature of climate change, I suppose it  
could just as easily have been western Michigan.

The mammoth was reasonably well-preserved. This elicited talk of a  
revival attempt by the same sort of scientists who have themselves  
quick-frozen upon their death, along with treasured artifacts like  
their pipes and soldering irons.

Unfortunately, the best the team could do was thaw out a few small  
steaks and serve them to the hopeful. I can just imagine the labored  
grins on the faces of those hardy diners. We know from centuries of  
native oral tradition that mammoth meat was a bit tough, even when  
fresh.

But back to western Michigan. My wife's family has a cabin in  
Ludington, a couple of hours north of Benton Harbor. We visit the  
cabin every other summer to enjoy the miles of lonely beach along the  
lake.

Next time we go there, you can bet we'll be detouring to take in the  
Heath tour, which I hope includes a museum. I'd love to see my beloved  
DX-20 transmitter, which hummed and sizzled and arced in a manner not  
described in the literature, and which struck fear into the hearts of  
nearby TV viewers in my ancestral La Mesa homeland.

With tongue firmly in cheek, and with appreciation for those who  
bothered to read this far--

Wayne,
N6KR


On Sep 8, 2011, at 10:59 PM, David Pratt wrote:

> Not sure you should be advertising the competition on here, Nape.
> Heathkit was excellent in years gone by, but for me it's ELECRAFT for
> the present and the future.
>
> 73 de David G4DMP